Apple Inc (AAPL)

(A Top Pick Oct 14/14. Up 30.64%.) Has almost $30 a share in cash and is going to earn about $8.60-$9 this year. He is optimistic that they will again find a way to create a category where others have tried and have not done so well, such as the watch. Dividend yield of 1.47%.

One of the great growth stocks of our age. It is actually not expensive. If you strip out the $30 per share in cash they have on their balance sheet, it is only trading at about 12.5X PE. This is still a cheap value stock and is growing at above average rate. Yield of 1.5%.

Write Covered Calls? You could, although he has never thought of doing it. You would be getting some pretty nice premiums. This is a conservative way of playing it. Don’t forget that whenever you are doing a Covered Call, you are effectively reducing the price of the stock by the value of the Call. Just make sure you know what you are doing because Covered Calls are not difficult to put on, but they get really interesting when there is volatility and you want to take them off. Where a stock price is $100, he looks for an ETF where the Strike price is $100 or $105. Some people will say that you should only go out 1 month or 2 because you will get better yield, because you can do it 2 or 3 times over 6 months. He prefers going out 6 months as he likes more downside protection. It also depends on ex-dividend dates.

Thinks there are better opportunities with some of the companies that have not been so high flying. There are some big US technology companies that are undervalued relative to the expectations that are built in Apple.

You can’t say anything negative about this company. Chart shows higher highs and higher lows. At a new all-time high today. Technology tends to do well from October through to January, but this one kind of bucks that trend as it can do well even in the summer. This has been a massive growth stock.

If you have a view that you like the company and that the growth rate is good, then you hold on. The iWatch is coming out.

Half the people think the iWatch is going to be a flop and the other half thinks it is going to be one of those sneaky hits that people just can’t live without. He thinks the stock will trade up because 1) most of the analysts are behind the ball on this and they’ll all raise their targets next week, and he thinks it trades up to $120 in the 1^st quarter. The iWatch is coming out in early April, later than everybody expected. A very defensive name to him.

You’re going to get some volatility. As the holiday sales get announced, there is going to be some people that think they are great numbers and others that don’t. From a financial point of view, the company is in great shape. Strong balance sheet and have lots of cash. They are buying back stock and they have a dividend. He would wait for the stock to pull back below $700.

They are gaining traction in the lower income emerging market countries, so the lower cost phones in the high growth regions strategy is going well. They are continuing to innovate. With Apple Pay and iWatch coming out he doesn’t know when it will be profitable, but they are continuing to innovate. He likes that they have $120 billion in cash and they can’t spend it fast enough.

(A Top Pick Jan 29/14. Up 52.46%.) Trading at 13.8X what he expects to earn by September 2015. The iPhone 6 was probably one of the most successful product launches of all time. A very high margin piece of business. The mix for this company is very favourable, because the iPhone is a very high margin product, and as it becomes a larger and larger percentage of the total, their gross margins of the company will rise. He expects over 40% of gross margin will lead to a surprise on the upside in terms of earnings. Producing an enormous amount of cash and most of it they are banking. They really can’t keep up with the amount of cash coming in, although they are paying a very fine dividend and are buying back about 6% of the float per year. The iWatch and the ApplePay are the innovation side. Yield of 1.76%.

Likes this. He thinks 2015 is going to be their greatest year, and hopefully 2016 will be even better. Sitting on an enormous amount of cash. The best branded company in the world. Thinks of this as more of a consumer company rather than a technology company.

It was a great company in 2008-09. But it fell well over 50% back then. The drop in 2012 was about competition and they turned it around. He would look to take money off the table and then buy more at the $80-90 area, or write a call on it.

He sees it as a software business that sells hardware. There are only two ecosystems. IOS and Android. Once you are hooked into one, you stay with it. Will generate a tremendous amount of excess cash this year. He expects it to continue. We are in the midst of an upgrade cycle and will continue into 2015.

Sell McDonalds (MCD-N) to buy Apple (AAPL-Q)? Apple is a product story, and as with all product stories, if you miss a product cycle it can lead to big problems. Expectations around this company are such that you really don’t know if this is going to go much higher. Not sure how much more penetration they can get outside of developed economies, on a subsidized basis. Great company, but don’t confuse a great investment with a great product.

He likes it here. If someone asked what sector he would stick with, it would be US technology. There is tremendous growth here. Likes their product lines, which he thinks have not been monetized fully yet. Valuation is less then the market multiple, and they are sitting on a huge amount of cash. Relatively cheap.